Mysterious 'painted people' of Scotland are long gone, but their DNA lives on

The ancient Pictish symbol stone at the foot of the 11th century Irish Celtic round tower in Abernethy, Scotland. On the left-hand side of the image there are some chains.

Ancient DNA reveals that the Picts, the "painted people" of Scotland who fought off the Romans, weren't an enigmatic group that migrated from faraway lands. Instead, the Picts had local roots and were related to other Iron Age people in Britain, a new study finds.

An analysis of eight skeletons from two Pictish cemeteries, published Thursday (April 27) in the journal PLOS Genetics, also suggests that the Picts did not organize their society around the female bloodline, contrary to what historians have long suggested.